Campion College, the Sydney-based private Catholic institution offering undergraduate courses in western Sydney from next year, has entered a debate about educational reform, asserting that it is already planning to embrace the graduate school model that is being touted by Education Minister Brendan Nelson.

"We are in the business of offering liberal arts degree from which students can then build a vocational postgraduate degree in either business, education, media, medicine or law at Notre Dame or one of the other universities," college president Fr John Fleming told The Australian.

Today's Higher Education section of the paper reports that regional and outer-suburban universities have expressed concern over proposed reforms to push students to complete a general degree before entering elite graduate schools at the nation's sandstone universities.

Federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson yesterday outlined in The Australian a second wave of reforms that would encourage universities to specialise in research graduate schools or teaching only.

Predicting that under the US-style graduate school model, taxpayer-funded places would be shifted from the prestige research-intensive universities to teaching-only campuses, Dr Nelson said the changes were required to ensure Australia's universities could compete internationally.